Over in Rolling Stone, McConaughey talks about the preparation he put into his role as Rust Cohle, revealing that he wrote a 450-PAGE GRAPH to help him inhabit the role in each stage of the series, which spans 17 years. Basically, he broke it down into the “Four Stages of Rustin Cohle,” outlining what his character should be like in 1995, the Crash, 2002, and 2012.

He needs the regimen of the homicide detective. He needs the case to actually survive. One, because he’s great at it. And two, because it’s going to keep him from killing himself.”

Crash

“He knows he may die sooner living this life, but there’s a freedom and peace in that knowledge for him.”

2002 Cohle

“But the case is still his lifeline. He has some small hope that there’s going to be a way out of his being and pain and criticism, so he makes an effort into domesticity, a la the girlfriend. Only to prove that he was not made for it, and there is no way out. So what does he do? He resigns to his nature, once again.”

2012

“This guy lived longer than he hoped. Fallen prey to his own beliefs. More cynical, angrier, he’s had to endure the existence of this shitstorm called life … He’s a guy who’s resigned to his indentured servitude of being alive. But he despises the sentence and the penance. He will not accept defeat. He’s not going become a madman, he’s not going to kill himself. He wrestles the devil every day, and he realizes that this may last a lot longer than he ever hoped for.”

The thing in common with all four stages of Rustin Cohle is that the case seems to be the only thing keeping him alive, that he doesn’t much care for living, and that without the case, there doesn’t seem much reason to continue existing. Does that mean Rust Cohle is going to blow his brains out?

I doubt it.

Will he die? I think so.

Look: Nic Pizzolatto has written that the series will come to a naturalistic end. In other words, everything that happens in the finale will flow naturally from the character arcs. A premature death seems to be a natural end point for this character. I don’t think that, in the end, Rust Cohle is going to solve the case, have his debt erased, and join Marty’s PI firm and live happily ever after. Rust Cohle has nothing to live for beyond the case. What does he do at the end of the day? He “goes home.” What does that look like in 2012? It looks like this:

When he’s out there at night in his lawn chair drinking cheap beer, I imagine the only thing that keeps him from thinking about his dead daughter, his ex-wife, and his inability to live peacefully with someone else is the Yellow King case. It’s become his identity. Without it, he’s got nothing left.

So, no: I doubt that he’ll hang himself, but will he put himself in harms way? Will he sacrifice himself? Will he take a bullet to take down the Spaghetti Monster? You’re damn straight. The case will be the end of Rustin Cohle. Without it, he has no voice. When he dies, who will shed a tear? His mind will always be lost in Carcosa, his last and final resting place.

From the play called The King in Yellow:

Song of my soul, my voice is dead,
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa

I’ll take it a step further: I believe not only does the series finale involve Rust (and likely Marty’s death) but that posthumously they’ll find his storage shed and pin all the killings on him. Rust’s “crucifixion” isn’t just him giving his life to take out this particular band of bad guys but that he’ll go down in history as the Yellow King Killer or something and it wont dismantle the network of Tuttle/evil, just break a branch off of the tree.

I hold out hope though that Fuck & Suck are out there somewhere in a car and may roll up at the key moment and if not save the day at least verify Rust’s story with their own eyes before the end.

I think (am guessing) you are right. In the boat, unless they can convince the sheriff to switch sides (by showing the tape, say), they have crossed the line, but seem good with that and all it might entail. (Perhaps that’s why Marty went and “said good-bye” to Maggie.) So, it’s all or nothing now, perhaps.

Yeah, sure but does that mean that every bit of literature, film, entertainment, etc. that’s been out for more than a few months is fair game? Who has all that time? Why can’t you just be nice and not reveal the END to anything?

Damn, out of action yesterday and missed about a half-dozen stories. Am I supposed to bitch about that or not?
I’m 50/50 on Rust and/or Marty dying. Compelling arguments both ways, although I don’t see Rust killing himself. Suck and Fuck are going to step up and assist in the conclusion; I don’t see either of them as knowingly or unknowingly in on the cult, and we know Marty and Suck have at least one sit down, and it appears the fellas show up at the scene of something big.

Only disagreement is that this death isn’t premature. I think 1995 Cohle is the only incarnation of the character that still had life in him. He’s just burning out the days as Crash, in 02 and especially in 12.

Thanks for this, I think you are right on track. One detail I think we’ll get about Rust’s past, is that I think he killed his daughter. Not on purpose of course, I think he ran over her in the drive way. There is a great mirroring in the descent into ‘carcosa’ for these two characters. Rust starts his descent after he runs over his daughter, then falls even farther when he sees a junky shoot up their baby…and Rust kills him. Marty killed Ledoux after seeing the abused children, and has had his junkie baby moment, with the microwave. All that is left is him seeing his own daughter destroyed, or learning about something horrible in her past he wasn’t aware of…like having been abused in the past. Plenty of clues for that. In this way, the two characters journeys mirror each other in a twisted mobius strip. Cohle will make his exit, but I think Marty will step firmly into Carcosa. We’ll see. I’ve been going nutz with a friend of mine about this show, so nutz we were compelled to get it all down in a blog: A Girl, a Guy and Cthulhu. If you are as obsessive as we are about the show, you might enjoy it: [crazytruedetectivetheories.wordpress.com]

I’ll give away this much. What are the biggest assumptions about this case we’ve all almost universally made?
1. The killer is a He
2. The cult killed and arranged the body of Dora Lange
3. Marie Fotenot is dead.
In fact, we don’t know if any of those are true. And if you take away those assumptions, a whole hell of a lot becomes much much clearer….